


After Today

by heavvymetalqueen



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Choking, Coexisting, Diamond Earrings, M/M, Overlapping Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 20:57:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8816011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavvymetalqueen/pseuds/heavvymetalqueen
Summary: Ocelot does not bother sneaking when he comes to the isolated house in Alaska.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day 8 of Ocelhira Week, prompt "coexisting"

Ocelot does not bother sneaking when he comes to the isolated house in Alaska. Three large sled dogs whine and bark at him as he trudges through the early spring sludge. He rubs them roughly behind the ears and on their rumps and they wag happily.

Wolf is going to love them.

He misses DD more than he ever thought he would, and even more now that he’s getting old.

 

 _\--someone will say what is lost can never be saved..._  
_Despite all my rage--_

 

He immediately recognized the small form huddled by the destroyed titan that used to be his boss, trembling and matted with his master’s blood. He’d lifted him in his arms, and hidden his tears in his fur, because he didn’t have a right to cry for a man he’d consciously sent to the slaughter.

He’d left him with Kaz, along with V’s diamond. Kaz hadn’t cried, but not even the aviators could hide that it’d been because he had no tears to cry anymore.

The kid was asleep on his couch, and DD carefully shuffled to lie next to him, licking his limp hand.

Kaz had snapped open his earring and sunken V’s in its place.

“Do you still have yours?”

Ocelot had shaken his head. Too much of a giveaway. It was gone, like everything else from those days, deep at the bottom of the ocean.

Kaz had reached out and forced his earring into Ocelot’s mostly closed piercing, tearing the scar tissue. A drop of blood was on his fingers when he pulled them back to lick them.

He still tasted metallic when Ocelot had kissed him, rough and quick, before turning on his spurs and stomping away.

 

_\--- And I still believe that I cannot be saved ---_

 

He knows he died years ago. He was a good dog.

When he looks up, Kaz is on the porch, arms crossed and amused look on his face.

He lets him in, even though he knows why he’s there.

They have to play their roles one last time, and they’ve both long accepted it.

Ocelot toes his soaked boots off as Kaz hobbles about his kitchen without his cane, picking up the whistling kettle and pouring two cups of tea.

Kaz’s sencha is still as sharp and grassy as it was thirty years ago.

 

 _\-- Once I ran to you,_  
_Now I'll run from you ---_

 

They’d gotten so used to drinking tea with the locals they did it even when they weren’t out on social missions. Bare feet on the threadbare old carpet, hot cup of chai in their hands, syrupy sweet and heady with cardamom. It was almost the only way to get Kaz to stop working.

When Ocelot discovered the other way to make him stop working, they drank tea afterwards and smoked, still naked and wearing each other’s marks on their skin like bizarre medals to their loneliness and delicate balance.

Kaz never wore his aviators then, and Ocelot soaked up in the privilege of his slanted blue eyes, still hooded and warm, and allowed himself to forget for a few minutes that he was going to betray him, and destroy his life.

 

_\--- for I toss and turn I can't sleep at night ---_

 

“I was about to make dinner. Do you...?”

Ocelot shakes his head, even though he is hungry. The last thing he needs is to wallow more than he already is, lose his resolve, take an offer that has long gone overdue and send decades of careful planing down the drain.

He still sinks into Kaz’s old squeaky couch, and turns to him when it dips, and kisses his lips when they’re offered to him.

Just because they have a role to play, it doesn’t have to be right now.

 

 _\--- I want you to remember_  
_a love so full it could send us all ways ---_

 

“Stay here,” he’d said. It’d been the first words they’d spoken since Ocelot had stormed into his living room two hours before and asked, _begged_ to be fucked until he couldn’t think anymore.

He’d shaken his head.

“He’s dead. It’s over. Let it go.”

It had been tempting, and Ocelot was so tired. So tired, and every convoluted contraption he’d propped his life and mind on was dissolving like sand castles in the rain, and Kaz’s anger and sadness were the only things he could relate to anymore.

He’d allowed himself to play house for two weeks, _pretend_ as if they were _people_. Ate homemade food in the small kitchen and mushed the dogs down to the village for beer and tobacco, and had sex in a bed every night.

David was over often, followed by dogs, cigarette smoke and the faint stink of cheap whiskey. He accepted Kaz’s explanation that Ocelot was an old friend, but Ocelot could tell he didn’t believe it. He was a good kid, smart and kind. They wondered sometimes what he could’ve become if they hadn’t strung him along since birth to be their sacrificial lamb. A doctor? A veterinarian, for sure. An actor perhaps, with his rugged good looks. But now he was just like them - a dog of war, blood-stained and hollow-eyed. Of all their sins, maybe this was the worst.

They were in too deep. Turning back was no option, nor was stopping. So Ocelot left.

 

 _\--- There is no lonelier place_  
_Than lying in this bed ---_

 

“It’s been a while, huh,” chuckles Kaz as he pulls him by the wrist towards the bedroom. He takes off his gloves first, and Ocelot uses his naked fingers to loosen Kaz’s ponytail, run his fingers in his hair. It’s even longer than his at this point.

He takes off Kaz’s aviators, leaving them on the nightstand.

He’s going to need them, when this is over.

But now, he just wants to kiss Kaz’s closed eyes, see the nostalgic milky irises look at him heatedly as he pushes him on the bed.

Kaz’s fake leg tumbles to the floor with his jeans, but he keeps the arm, brushed metal cool on Ocelot’s skin and unyielding under his fingers.

 

 _\--- This old world is rough, it's just getting rougher_  
_cover me, come on baby, cover me ---_

 

Kaz had screamed the first time he’d touched his missing arm, and Ocelot had held him down until he’d started crying and screaming for mercy in broken Russian.

To make up for it, Ocelot had let him punch the fuck out of him and fuck him raw until he passed out, airwaves crushed in his remaining hand.

“Snake not satisfying you anymore?” he’d rasped while Kaz sloppily disinfected his bloodier scratches.

“I don’t know. It’s like he’s a different person.” He looked down, eyebrows knitted over damaged eyes. “At least you still treat me the same, you know?”

And Ocelot, who could not remember why Snake felt different now, twined his fingers with Kaz’s scabbed ones and kissed his knuckles.

 

 _\--- I can hear the wild wind blowing_  
_turn out the light, bolt the door_  
_I ain't going out there no more ---_

 

He straddles him, dragging his nails down his chest. He’s starting to show signs of his age but his muscles still bounce under Ocelot’s splayed palms as he slides himself over his shaft.

One last time, for old times’ sake.

If they closed their eyes, they could almost believe it.

But they stare into each other’s eyes as Ocelot starts moving slowly, white hair brushing Kaz’s scarred chest, his flesh hand searing into his hip.

Kaz nods imperceptibly when Ocelot’s fingers wrap slowly around his throat.

They both know why he’s here. Their show goes on.

He does not resist. He does not break eye contact, not even when he convulsively comes inside of him, not even when his heart starts stuttering, desperate for oxygen.

He squeezes harder. Kaz’s hand slips from his side, twitching on the mattress. His heart slows down.

Ocelot envies him as that bitterly stubborn life slowly fades from his pale eyes.

Bruises are already starting to blossom when he lets go. He touches them gently. They’re the last bruises he’ll get to give him.

He slips his eyes closed and lies by his side as he goes cold and gray as the snow outside.

He dresses him again when he can’t stay any longer. His daughter will probably find him, and Kaz would not want her to see him like this.

He’d put his aviators on his nose if he could, but Liquid needs those. A shame.

After a moment of deliberation, he unhooks the small diamond stud from Kaz’s ear. He is wearing Kaz’s old one today, so he pins it on his ascot. A small light on a sea of red. Appropriate.

He kisses Kaz’s cold lips before leaving. There’s work to be done.

And if he joins him in two days, it might just not be the worst fate of them all.

 

 _\--- But to look for heaven_  
_Is to live here in hell ---_

 

Kaz had retreated from the light and the music, as he always did. But he wasn’t hard to find. He wouldn’t be able to get too high on walkways, especially after a couple of glasses of wine.

But he liked to look at the sea, and that was where Ocelot found him, legs slung over the edge of a platform and the moonlight making his diamond glint in the darkness.

He’d plopped next to him, and offered him the plate. “Brought you cake.”

“I already had cake.”

“You didn’t. You took a plate and then put it down.”

Music was throbbing in the tarmac under them, but the ebb of the ocean was still loud enough to drown it out.

Kaz rolled his head towards Ocelot and opened his mouth wide.

With a chuckle, Ocelot scooped up a forkful of cake and shoveled it in his mouth.

“Too sweet,” he grunted as he chewed. He still opened his mouth again, and again, until the cake was gone and the paper plate abandoned on the ground.

Kaz leaned his empty shoulder against Ocelot’s arm.

“Coexisting, then?” said Ocelot, arm slung over Kaz’s back.

“Yeah. Might as well,” he sighed. “We’re in this together now, you and I.”

His lips tasted like too sweet whipped cream and sea salt.

 

 _\--- And history reeks_  
_of the wrongs we have done_  
_after today_  
_consider me gone ---_

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [TAPE OBTAINED] [Bullet With Butterfly Wings](https://youtu.be/8-r-V0uK4u0) \- 1995  
> [TAPE OBTAINED] [Tainted Love](https://youtu.be/xMjyzDZTPnc) \- 1981  
> [TAPE OBTAINED] [The Chemicals Between Us](https://youtu.be/QIINldS8a1s) \- 1999  
> [TAPE OBTAINED] [Cover Me](https://youtu.be/sejk6EI7rpA) \- 1984  
> [TAPE OBTAINED] [Consider Me Gone](https://youtu.be/SPMl1xE60is) \- 1985


End file.
